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Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

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Re: Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

#21

Post by protomyth »

kmfrk wrote: post #13
VladRussian wrote: post #6

from the sources it seems to be a doing of the House. Do we have any Republican here? Can such a person elaborate on the merits of this decision, please.

The House basically controls funding, but I'd be interested to see who specifically voted in favour of cutting the programmes.

to back kmfrk the US Constitution says in Article 1 Section 7 that "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives". This has grown a little in meaning: http://www.usconstitution.net/constfaq_q125.html

Re: Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

#23

Post by anigbrowl »

eli wrote: post #14

This is a misleading headline. Nothing has happened yet. From the source article: The White House requested $35 million for the e-government fund in 2011. The House allocated only $2 million in its bill, H.R. 1. The Senate, meanwhile, would provide $20 million for the e-government fund. http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=35&sid=2327798 It's a budget fight, similar to the ones going on at hundreds of agencies right…

Agreed, but some of the sites are set to lose funding in a few weeks amid a febrile political atmosphere. My understanding is that the main expense areas are hosting/infrastructural overhead, developer salaries, and normal office/administrative overhead which is a fact of life in DC.

The pessimist in me thinks that keeping the inner workings of government in a state of murky obscurity furthers the interests of some more cynical politicians.

Re: Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

#24

Post by [deleted] »

shawnee_ wrote: post #11
VladRussian wrote: post #6

from the sources it seems to be a doing of the House. Do we have any Republican here? Can such a person elaborate on the merits of this decision, please.

Not a Republican, but I think what they are failing to recognize is that these websites are infrastructure in the same ways that highways are infrastructure. Would we bulldoze the Interstate Highway system if we couldn't afford to maintain it? In the long term there are a lot of potential businesses to be built off the info these sites hold. For example: 379,939 raw and geospatial datasets on data.gov -- that's like…

[deleted]

Re: Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

#25

Post by jacoblyles »

VladRussian wrote: post #6

from the sources it seems to be a doing of the House. Do we have any Republican here? Can such a person elaborate on the merits of this decision, please.

I find myself voting for the GOP more and more as the US budget deficit yawns ever larger (please don't hate me for it), so perhaps I can shed some light on the issue.

Most likely cuts to these programs were included in a multi-thousand page budget bill. The Republicans elected to Congress had a choice between two budget bills, one of which spent $30 billion less. Following the will of the voters who granted them a historic electoral sweep in November, they chose to pass the smaller one. The decision to cut these particular programs was made by one of the hundreds of lobbyists, aides, and government agency employees that had a hand in writing the bill.

The congress people who voted for the cuts did not go down the list of federal programs making cost/benefit analyses to decide which programs to cut. Rather, they were presented a large package and asked to make a yes or no decision. Politics is not as rational as the rest of the entries in this discussion imply.

These information programs are tiny for now (though federal programs have a way of metastasizing) and they probably provide more benefit than cost. It is a bad policy decision to cut them, but if the alternative is making no cuts to the budget then the whole package may be worth it.

I agree that $30 billion of cuts does next to nothing to shrink the deficit. Sadly, there is little momentum behind my man Rand Paul’s proposal to cut $500 billion, or Paul Ryan’s roadmap to reduce future Social Security and Medicare deficits. The Republican leadership is playing budget theatre, passing tiny cuts that make them look good without touching the politically sensitive programs that really need shrinking. On the other hand the Democrats are playing budget denial, fighting to keep and expand every line item on the budget. Neither approach is very appealing to me. We need a plausible path to avoid national bankruptcy without raising taxes to uncompetitive levels.

Re: Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

#26

Post by knowtheory »

jdp23 wrote: post #17
knowtheory wrote: post #4

It is extremely ironic then, that the Canadian open data movement has held up the US as an example of transparency and openness, and a model for the sorts of disclosure that the Canadian federal government should live up to. This is such a momentous leap backwards, i just don't know where to begin. There is no other source for this data. We're still figuring out the best use for it, but if the government doesn't prov…

Yeah really. It's almost like politicians in DC don't really want the information to be available ... That said, the HN community makes a real point of how apolitical it is. Rather than organize and work with government transparency advocates to try to influence the system, the norms here discourage people from discussing politics. So it's pretty ironic to me to see all the disappointment about this here.

I really don't view this as a partisan issue, although in some senses it is political.

The problem is that both political parties pay lip service to openness and transparency (although my partisan biases would claim one party favors this more than the other), the real difficulty is hold politicians to their promises in the face of the sausage-making of daily federal politics.

But, to quote Napoleon, never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. I'm more than willing to believe that this is being left out of a sense of benign neglect.

That this is being neglected is much more indicative of what Congress's actual priorities are. :(

Re: Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

#27

Post by knowtheory »

mberning wrote: post #10
knowtheory wrote: post #4

It is extremely ironic then, that the Canadian open data movement has held up the US as an example of transparency and openness, and a model for the sorts of disclosure that the Canadian federal government should live up to. This is such a momentous leap backwards, i just don't know where to begin. There is no other source for this data. We're still figuring out the best use for it, but if the government doesn't prov…

I know what you mean. I find it incredibly frustrating that we HAPPILY go after minuscule savings on things like data.gov and NPR, meanwhile it is 100% taboo to talk about cutting big budget areas like the military. In my opinion we need to be looking at the big 3 because that is where we have the best opportunity to make significant improvements. Defense Social Security Medicare/Medicaid

Yeah but you've got to remember that every program has a constituency.

The fact that we're the constituency, does mean that we have to temper our vociferousness with solid arguments and evidence. This stuff is important, but remember, there are programs out there to feed impoverished children. Is data.gov more important than that? Maybe not.

The point is though, that data.gov and open government data is, given our governing system should be more efficient, and provide better results than alternatives, such as making everyone go through FOIA or scraping individual agency sites, and relying on a patchwork quilt of agency disclosure.

Killing this program is going to cost more money in the future, and one very clear argument was articulated by David Eaves a couple days ago (http://eaves.ca/2011/03/30/access-to-information-is-fatally-... i also posted this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386915 ).

This is terrible policy, but we do need to understand that the budget is a complicated beast.

Re: Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

#28

Post by jdp23 »

knowtheory wrote: post #26
jdp23 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah really. It's almost like politicians in DC don't really want the information to be available ... That said, the HN community makes a real point of how apolitical it is. Rather than organize and work with government transparency advocates to try to influence the system, the norms here discourage people from discussing politics. So it's pretty ironic to me to see all the disappointment about this here.

I really don't view this as a partisan issue, although in some senses it is political. The problem is that both political parties pay lip service to openness and transparency (although my partisan biases would claim one party favors this more than the other), the real difficulty is hold politicians to their promises in the face of the sausage-making of daily federal politics. But, to quote Napoleon, never ascribe to…

I agree, I also don't see it as a partisan issue. Both parties have forward-looking people who understand the importance of transparency and the value it can bring to society -- and both parties have insiders who jealously guard information, pork experts whose main goal is to reward their campaign contributors, and some outright corrupt pols.

Re: Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

#29

Post by adammichaelc »

mberning wrote: post #10
knowtheory wrote: post #4

It is extremely ironic then, that the Canadian open data movement has held up the US as an example of transparency and openness, and a model for the sorts of disclosure that the Canadian federal government should live up to. This is such a momentous leap backwards, i just don't know where to begin. There is no other source for this data. We're still figuring out the best use for it, but if the government doesn't prov…

I know what you mean. I find it incredibly frustrating that we HAPPILY go after minuscule savings on things like data.gov and NPR, meanwhile it is 100% taboo to talk about cutting big budget areas like the military. In my opinion we need to be looking at the big 3 because that is where we have the best opportunity to make significant improvements. Defense Social Security Medicare/Medicaid

If Congress were a typical family... Income: $40k Husband and wife arguing over whether to spend $80k or $79.9k.

These "cuts" are nothing more than talking points.

Re: Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

#30

Post by thwarted »

jdp23 wrote: post #17
knowtheory wrote: post #4

It is extremely ironic then, that the Canadian open data movement has held up the US as an example of transparency and openness, and a model for the sorts of disclosure that the Canadian federal government should live up to. This is such a momentous leap backwards, i just don't know where to begin. There is no other source for this data. We're still figuring out the best use for it, but if the government doesn't prov…

Yeah really. It's almost like politicians in DC don't really want the information to be available ... That said, the HN community makes a real point of how apolitical it is. Rather than organize and work with government transparency advocates to try to influence the system, the norms here discourage people from discussing politics. So it's pretty ironic to me to see all the disappointment about this here.

When it comes to website/software features or technology choices, we tell ourselves things like "there are many more grandmothers in the world than nerds" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389903) or "you're not the target demographic" or "you just don't understand what everyone else wants because you've got a technical bent" and "people don't want to use computers, they just want to get things done." But we still feel like we have a voice because we can speak with our capabilities and actually execute.

But when it comes to politics, where we recognize that our voices are small and we aren't empowered to do directly do anything and that what all the grandmothers want is going to overshadow what we want, we tell ourselves that we'd be able to affect change if only we got involved and became more political. Small voices have an uphill battle on trying to execute on political stuff.

If we have trouble communicating to people about what's important (or what should be important) when it comes to technology choices, we're going to have trouble communicating what's important (or what should be important) when it comes to things like government budgets or political positions. And I think we all recognize this. And that's why we're not politically involved and avoid discussing politics.

It's a waste of my time to have political discussions with almost everyone, it makes me feel bad about being a nerd and valuing things like rational discourse, the scientific method, and trying to being informed. I'd rather spend my time doing things that make feel good about being a nerd, and that's having discussions about technology things and not political things. Stereotypical technology discussions have the capability to advance the state of the art; stereotypical political discussions rarely advanced anything.

I think we also recognize that if you can't get people to take action on something obvious, such as that financing an expensive war machine is a massive waste and that we should spend more money on education, you're not going to have an easy time getting them to take action on something that's non-obvious. That being said, I think the value of transparency of government is obvious, but it's also hard to explain something that you find obvious to someone who doesn't also see that it's obvious.

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